KEBANGKITAN PEREMPUAN PEJUANG DAMAI HAK-HAK SIPIL DALAM NOVEL MERIDIAN KARYA ALICE WALKER (SE BUAH ANALISIS DIALEKTIK DENGAN PENDEKATAN STRUKTURALISME GENETIK)

Abstract

This thesis is mainly intended to reveal an Afro-American nonviolent struggle for equality. The character Meridian is the representation of woman fighter in the 1960s when nonviolent struggle reached its peak. Autobiographically to a certain degree (Meridian and Walker share approximate ages, a deep love for the South, education at a women's college in Atlanta and Civil Right Movement), This novel is artfiilly crafted. This study explores further Meridian's personal transformation and the tactic, and strategy she has performed which are different from her friends in the civil rights worker group. This research also discloses her reasons and intension of her nonviolent struggle and the objective of her struggle. This study is library research and applies the genetically structuralism approach, social-historical method and dialectical analysis. Hence, it studies the matter from the viewpoints of history, sociology, and literature. Meridian is aware of and thinks about people's sufferings and then awake to dedicate herself to the Civil Rights Movement struggle. In the beginning of her struggle, she executed violence struggle because her friends in the civil rights worker forced her for willing to die and kill for revolution. Her decision bothered her feeling so that she decided to go back to the South to struggle in nonviolence movement. She visits the Afro-American families to make them aware of their rights, to live up the standard of family and motherhood. Novel Meridian is not so much about the Civil Right Movement, but of it, and by that its significance lies primarily in Walker's literary use of Civil Rights values and strategies. This requires some explanation, but can be taken as an example of the model of the crazy quilt. The quilt which requires piecing together by the reader can be likened to the Civil Rights Movement's goal of integration, a joining of 'black and white together' or, as Walker would probably have it, a joining of peoples of all colors within the fabric of society, but with distinct patterns, identities and histories still visible and yet harmoniously combined. Concepts and practices like beloved community and nonviolent resistance intervene in the opposition between the political (Socialism) and spiritual (Christianity), by ridding the latter of its institutional hierarchy (the Church) and focus on hereafter, while shedding the former's instrumentalism (killing for the revolution) and giving its materialism and collectivism a moral grounding. The historical suffering of non white peoples of women and of children provides that moral grounding in a recognition that change cannot be brought about by 'doing onto them as they have done', because that would only reverse the binary rather than challenge its destructive logic. Or, as one Civil Rights activist put it in typically less pious and more tactically astute terms: "the most powerful weapon that people literally have no defense for is love, kindness.This research proves that Meridian's nonviolent struggles are performed to make the Afro-Americans aware of their civil rights, especially to promote women's liberation. In addition, her belief in nonviolent struggles by visiting Afro-American families is paralleled to her effort to reunite and maintain family relationship, not only in the Afro-American families but also in others. By her effort, it may be expected that it will be created beloved community. Keywords: violence, racism, sexism, personal transformation, awake to fight, Civil Rights Movement, women liberation, family relationship, nonviolent resistance, social historical background, beloved community.